Why Japanese Zero Pilots Feared the F8F Bearcat Before It Ever Reached the Pacific

In the first weeks of 1943, American patrol squadrons in the Solomon Islands painted their PBY Catalinas flat black and began flying them alone at night, at a hundred feet over the water, into channels held by the Japanese Army. The aircraft was a 1933 design that could not survive five minutes in daylight. Through July and August of 1943 it helped destroy the supply system of an entire Japanese army. This documentary follows the Black Cat squadrons from the 1933 Navy specification that traded away speed, armour and armament to buy range — an aircraft designed to see rather than fight — through the Japanese decision to move all theatre logistics onto night barge traffic after daylight shipping became impossible, to the central Solomons campaign in which Black Cats and PT boats made the darkness unusable. It covers the airborne search radar paired with a fourteen-hour loiter, the flare dropped beyond the target, the masthead attacks, and the evacuation of Kolombangara in which roughly ten thousand men were taken off an island that was never fought for. Built from squadron records and campaign accounts rather than the popular retelling. Subscribe for the definitive history of the United States in the Second World War — new documentaries every few days. #ww2 #worldwarii #pacificwar #blackcats #PBYCatalina #solomons #NewGeorgia #Kolombangara #wwiihistory #militaryhistory #USAInWW2